My Name Is "Mittwochen"

Being semi-retired, one of the first lessons I learned was that the best time to do virtually anything -- from shopping at Market of Choice to hiking in the backcountry -- is the middle of the week, when everyone else is either at work or school.

So in the spirit of adopting a trail name like all of the through-hikers I met on the Pacific Crest Trail last summer, I have borrowed "Midwochen" (German for "Wednesdays"), from GonzoPR Chief Spokesman Helmut Vallindaklopf, as my trail name for 2010.

Thus newly-christened, I departed Owl Farm for the Minotaur Lake trailhead up Rainy Creek in the upper Little Wenatchee River drainage on Thursday, July 8.My goal was to climb Labyrinth Mountain, a 6300-foot massif that looms over both Minotaur (top) and Theseus (bottom) Lakes in the Henry M. (Scoop) Jackson Wilderness, a smaller preserve on the south end of the Glacier Peak Wilderness.

Henry M. Jackson (D-Wash.) was -- along with Warren G. Magnuson (D-Wash.) and Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.)-- one of the last great Northwest pork-barrel politicians of the 20th century.

As chair of the U.S. Senate's Interior Committee, Jackson shepherded passage of much of the significant environmental legislation of the 1960s, including The Wilderness Act, which immediately protected 9 million acres of wilderness land and created a procedure for protecting additional backcountry as wilderness.

The trail to the top of Labyrinth Mountain starts at the Minotaur Lake Trailhead and ascends about 2,500 feet to the summit of the peak, which features an outstanding view of Glacier Peak (below).

Most of the natural features in the area were named by A.H. Sylvester, a topographer for the U.S. Geological Service and the first forest supervisor of the Wenatchee National Forest. His whimsical names were often creative, patterned and unusual while sometimes practical and descriptive.

In Greek mythology, the Minotaur -- a nasty creature with the head of a bull on the body of a man -- was held captive by King Minos of Crete in the Labyrinth, an elaborate maze-like prison. The Minotaur was eventually killed by Theseus, the founder/hero of Athens. Sylvester named Labyrinth Mountain for the complex contours of the peak.

At the trailhead, I met two young hikers from Leavenworth -- Isaac and Lily (right). I let them go first because they would have passed me anyway. But I caught them at Minotaur Lake, while they enjoyed a nice leisurely lunch.

I trudged on in the snow and actually reached the summit first, but they weren't far behind. They very graciously snapped some pix, including the shot at bottom in front of Theseus.

As a parenthetical footnote, I'm heading back to Owl Farm this week for more backcountry adventures and the opportunity to see my supervisor from my Forest Service days -- Denny McMillin -- perform his one-man show of the life and times of A.H. Sylvester.